Angela Penaredondo – Runner-Up

Omen Before Heavy Rain

I haven’t heard the rumble of a monsoon in daysbut if steam were to rise from this hot earth
then tumble, now is the time.Even rubber and pavement wait
for the familiar outpour,rage in spill to wash clear our sins.

I count his breaths under a vermillion narra.The tree’s burl, the size of an elephant’s knee bone,
wrinkles for eyes—wraps its tiny face in knots.Our cheeks brush, one soft, another, full of thistle.
In the thickness of that summer,

the sheen of his fur and paw turns filthy
while a frenzy of flies dart above crusted eyelids.Once stout, now abandoned
beneath father’s withered truck, a leashgrappled around his throat
I pray black magic does not steal his soul.

As froth dribbles from flews, his pupils
swell bloodshot ready to explode—teeth bared.He mutates into one of those portside mongrels,
scavenger of bones & charred fishtails,some mad hound roaming the quadrangles
of shanties. I learned then, death

ruptures like a splinter of lightning.
Cousins scamper naked in sunray,their necks caked in eucalyptus powder.
We all scatter like fireants, our flimsy slippers airborne.

Kallie Falandays – Second Runner-Up

We Are Already Full

Show me the part of you that is hungry,
he said. So I opened my mouth to say, is this

wide enough? Show me the part that is hungry.
So I opened my hands to say, is this hole

enough? Show me the part that is hungry, he said.
So I opened my eyes to say, is this whole

enough? Show me the part of you that is hungry.
So I sat on rocks for hours saying, these are my hands.

Fill them. This is the whole of it. Fill me.I showed him my stomach. This is the hole in it.

Fill it.This is the soul of it. Fill it.I showed him the spaces in between my teeth.

See my empty parts? See me empty parts? See the whole
ocean between my hands? See the whole hand before the ocean?

See the ocean? I stayed on the beach for weeks
licking the sand until I had no tongue.